New Report Finds Prop 50 Maps Among Most Extreme Gerrymanders in 50 Years

Proposed Maps Dismantle Communities of Color and Reverse Decades of Redistricting Reform

California’s proposed congressional district maps — privately drawn by party insiders and later approved by the state legislature and signed by Governor Gavin Newsom to create Proposition 50 — represent one of the most extreme partisan gerrymanders of the last half century, according to the Gerrymandering Project at Princeton University. With the help of an experienced redistricting demographer, a report released today analyzes the gerrymandered maps for dividing and weakening the political influence of communities of color. 

Part one of the report, detailing Proposition 50’s impact on communities of color, can be found here.

“Proposition 50 would undo the historic gains made under California’s citizen-led redistricting commission, where underrepresented communities have secured fairer representation and a stronger political voice,” said Robert Apodaca, Executive Director of United Latinos Action, a grassroots coalition educating and empowering Latino communities and working families. “By lumping agricultural regions together with distant urban centers, these maps dilute local community priorities, splinter apart communities of interest, and ultimately shield political incumbents from accountability.” 

Using block-level demographic analysis, this report shows how Prop 50’s maps divide cohesive Asian American, Black, and Latino neighborhoods into multiple districts, diluting their voting power. 

The following examples highlight violations of a core principle of independent redistricting: keeping communities of interest intact.

Northern and Central California

Sacramento
Asian American and Black communities in Lemon Hill, Florin, Fruitridge, and Parkway that have long been connected to a nearby Elk Grove congressional seat, have been carved into a district stretching to the rural Nevada border. Merging urban communities of color into a mountain-based district with vastly different policy priorities. 

Stockton
Stockton, with its 15 percent Black population, is currently housed within a single congressional seat to preserve the ability of the city’s Black communities to champion certain issues. The new map splits Stockton’s Black neighborhoods across multiple districts, disregarding scores of public testimony presented to the California Citizens Redistricting Commission and the wishes of the commissioner from Stockton, all whom successfully advocated for Stockton to remain whole. The new map also pulls Stockton’s Latino community into a district extending into Fresno County, weakening their influence on issues central to their city and the surrounding county.

East Bay
The proposed district lines divide the historic corridor of Black and other communities of color from Richmond through Bay Point, Pittsburg, Antioch, and Oakley into three congressional districts — splintering shared schools, churches, and civic institutions. 

Southern California

San Fernando Valley
The San Fernando Valley, home to one of the nation’s largest Latino populations, includes working-class, renter communities with shared cultural and socioeconomic ties. The new district lines fracture this population by splitting Lake Balboa and Reseda from nearby Latino neighborhoods and attaching them to distant Palmdale and Lancaster. 

Eastern San Gabriel Valley
Walnut, Rowland Heights, Hacienda Heights, Diamond Bar, and Chino Hills form a cohesive Asian American corridor that is currently mostly represented under a single congressional district, with Chino Hills drawn into a neighboring Orange County district. The new proposal fractures this corridor into three separate districts, scattering the population in a way that ensures no single district contains enough Asian American residents to influence representation in Congress.

Eastern Los Angeles
El Monte, Baldwin Park, La Puente, West Covina, and Covina comprise the most concentrated Latino region in eastern Los Angeles County. The proposed map splits this corridor into two districts, pairing parts of the community with predominantly white suburbs like Yorba Linda and Anaheim Hills.

Inland Empire
In the Inland Empire, the proposed map divides Hemet and San Jacinto into separate districts, isolating Black residents in a region where shared representation is essential to securing resources. It also fractures the Latino hub of Pomona, Chino, and Ontario by splitting Pomona and detaching Chino from its traditional partners, weakening Latino political power across the region.

Long Beach
Long Beach has long been a center of Black life in Southern California, connected to neighboring cities like Compton, Carson, and Bellflower through shared cultural and political ties. The proposed map severs those connections and instead links Long Beach to wealthier and majority-white coastal cities. 

San Diego
In San Diego, communities like City Heights, Bay Terraces, Lemon Grove, and Spring Valley are home to significant Black, East African, Asian, Latino, and immigrant populations that share common issues, yet the proposed map splits them across districts. Nearby Asian American hubs such as Mira Mesa and Rancho Peñasquitos face the same fate, as the proposal reinforces past divisions that fractured these neighborhoods despite documented community opposition. 

###

About Protect Voters FIRST
The Protect Voters First coalition is a broad alliance of good government organizations, social justice advocates, community leaders, and everyday Californians committed to keeping elections fair, transparent, and accountable. We believe voters should choose their representatives — not the other way around. By standing together, we are working to defeat Prop 50 and safeguard the independent, citizen-led redistricting reforms that Californians overwhelmingly approved.